The Blue and Red Pill Theoretical Framework

When I first returned to the manosphere after about a decade absence about a year ago and started reading around, I was surprised at how much it had changed. When I left it back in the early 2000s, what is now themed the manosphere, was composed largely by pick-up material often times focused on club game, or the likes. So when I found the Red Pill reddit, the blogs listed off it and started reading its contents, I discovered that the nascent philosophy that more or less consisted of “Do A, then do B, and then profit” had grown much larger. Many of the early pick up artists had identified what worked, but didn’t focus so much on why it worked. Thus, the general teaching in the sphere was very much focused on the “learning by doing” method, which consisted of “learn these lines, then go do 500 approaches”. However, the development that had taken place over my 10 year absence, was much more focused on developing frameworks for understanding the fabric of reality, and the very metaphor of “The Red Pill” pointed to seeing the world from outside the simulation presented by social and cultural programming.

One of the first things I read was an article on seeing reality for what it actually is, for someone with a background in philosophy and research methodology, this points towards experiencing the mind-independent reality in which we live. An early post of mine on this blog was concerning the objective vs. the subjective trying to outline what the distinction is between facts and our interpretation of facts. Or in other words, mind-dependent and mind-independent information.

When designing research projects, the theoretical framework is a collection of source material that serves as the foundation of research. It contains relevant terms and their definitions, relevant theories with citations, explicit statements of theoretical assumptions, and the sources that assist you in making the argument for, and asking questions about your research. It is building a foundation from concepts in order to assist you in the creation of hypotheses and theories.

The Blue Pill Theoretical Framework

The perspective often referred to only as “Blue Pill” is a framework that consists of many of the assumptions that are considered politically and culturally acceptable within the Western world. These assumptions tend to reflect our history, and our culture and are focused on the needs of the group as a whole. These concepts and assumptions are those supported by the cultural and social narrative, and that are ingrained in the population from birth until grave. There are slight changes, but the concepts largely remain the same.

For instance, monogamous marriage is great for the state, as it serves 3 purposes:

It ensures that most men are able to reproduce and get access to sex, thus reducing the odds that they will revolt.

It ensures that most men will have an incentive to work in state productive activities in order to take care of their wife and children.

It moves the burden for taking care of a wife and children from the state to each individual man.

The blue pill is this collection of stances, which society attempts to sell a narrative that may be detrimental to each individual, but beneficial to the group at large.

Just Be Yourself

This is somewhat of the core promise within the Blue Pill framework, the Universe has done all the hard work to plan out how your life will go, you just need to show up for it. Just being yourself is somewhat of a weird idea, seeing as most of us change throughout our lives as a function of our experiences. It also brings up a string of questions related to, when, where and how. This is a carte blanche for complacency, and self-disclosure that leads many men to think that it’s OK to vomit your emotions at people, or to lack ambition.

Men and Women are the Same

This is a fairly recent addition to the framework, having been added in the last 100 years or so. If one goes back a generation or two, one would find that the accepted cultural and social narrative was that the two sexes are different from each other in meaningful ways. This can take both soft forms and hard forms, the soft form being “Men and women are equal but different” and the hard form “Genders are social constructs“. In many ways this began when it became common to conflate equality of worth, meaning that all humans are of equal value in the form of their humanity, with “all humans are identical in ability“. The extreme position being a case of kettle logic, wherein the person accepts that humans are a species characterized by sexual dimorphism, yet that the very hormones and genetics that cause this dimorphism does not affect the brain.

A Relationship is Easy with The Right Person

What this assumption states is that if a relationship is successful then you did well in selecting your partner and you can commend yourself on a job well done. If however, your relationship fails, it means that you obviously did not pick the right partner and thus you should get back out there to actually find the right partner. Those of you who read my article on “No Win Scenarios of Social Justice” will recognize this as a scenario wherein the person is to blame for picking the wrong partner, but also if they fail to find their right partner.

This puts a person in a double-bind in addition to promote an unrealistic view of a relationship, which is always hard work. This is an insidious belief, because it tells both parties in the relationship that once you are with the “right person” you can stop being the person that originally attracted them and “just be yourself“.

The Right Partner Exists

Perhaps the cardinal fallacy of the blue pill mindset is the belief that there is exactly one “soul-mate” out there for every human. This promotes both an unhealthy perspective that one should expect to find a perfect partner, but in collusion with the “A relationship is easy with the right person” it creates a double-bind of sorts. The logic goes something like:

Premise A) A relationship is easy with the right person.

Premise B) A right person exists for all of us.

Premise C) Relationship is not easy.

Conclusion: Therefore, this relationship is not with the right person.

It promotes the idea that there is a single person out there that is perfect, and for men with a tendency to pedestal and idealize women, especially in the initial stages of a relationship, creates situations that are easy to enter but difficult to leave. The belief that one has found the perfect woman, puts a man in a position wherein he may put up with increasing levels of poor behavior without consequence, after all she is his one, and therefore there is nobody else out there for him.

The End-State is a Monogamous Relationship with Children and a Job

While reproduction is why we are on this earth as a species, our cardinal purpose so to speak. The conflation of long-term relationships with reproduction is a social and cultural one. One can reproduce outside of a relationship, and one can be in a relationship without children. The narrative in many Western cultures is that you are not an adult unless you are married with children, other arrangements may not apply. A man who lives his life as a carefree bachelor is often referred to as “prolonging adolescence“, a “man-boy” or various other shaming statements to make him conform and “man up and marry that slut“.

This is promoted as the ideal arrangement for humans, the pair-bond and raising children, is in many ways viewed by those who have engaged in it as one of the most rewarding experiences in their life. There is nothing more rewarding than being with the same person for most of your life, and raising little versions of yourself.

It is What You Can Do For Others

A man does his duty, to his state, to his parents, to his community and most of all towards his wife and children. A man takes pride in selflessly performing such duties, and imagines a reward in heaven. One could define these men as experts at delayed gratification, where they put off their own life and pleasures in order to enable such pleasures for those around them, this is in and of itself the greatest pleasure such men should aspire towards.

The Red Pill Theoretical Framework

The Red Pill theoretical framework is in many ways focused on “seeing reality” as is. This is the original meaning of the metaphor by Morpheus in “The Matrix”

“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.” Morpheus

The offer within the metaphor is seeing reality vs remaining in the simulation. In the terms frequently used within the manosphere it could be argued as exchanging one narrative for another narrative, the former with rose colored glasses, the latter with normal glasses. Some take this further than others, but at the core it is about viewing people’s action and the functionality of society with rational cynicism rather than blind idealism. Both men and women tend to view their partner as one thing in the beginning, but their perspective shifts with time, often reaching the low point near or after the ending of a relationship.

Be Your Best Self

The idea behind being your best self, is to put work in to improve your lot in life. Michelangelo’s David started out as a chunk of marble, but through hard labor, vision and determination was made into perhaps one of the best known works of art in history. The position being that we are all born as something, it is what we do with it that matters. Many men can be described as objects at rest in a vacuum, they remain inert until acted upon by an external force. The major difference in mindset between the blue pill and the red pill in this regard, is that while the blue pill judges you for lack of birth, the red pill judges you for lack of action.

Men and Women are Different

This is perhaps one of the cardinal principles of The Red Pill, and acceptance that the reason why books like “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” are printed, why magazines are full of advice columns of the type “100 things men/women look for” keep selling, and why so few men and women understand what women want. Those who are adherents of “constructivism” will argue that this is due to the influence of society and culture. Those who are fans of biology, will advocate that differences are biological.

However, the end result is not necessarily good either way. It doesn’t matter whether biology or society creates these differences, what matters is that they are there. One has to live according to what is actually there, not what is ideally there.

A Relationship even with a Good Person is Difficult

Any situation where you have to compromise, argue and agree, as opposed to make your decision yourself is inherently prone to conflict. There is no need for a sexual relationship to be involved, a business relationship, a friendship, or trying to get 4 of your friends to agree where to have dinner can be a discussion that is fraught with frustration, anger, conflict, disagreements and resentment. Add sex to the mix and you just add another ingredient that can cause conflict.

A relationship where feelings are involved as well as assets, sex, potentially children and a friendship, will by its very nature hold all the ingredients for a very volatile mix, and while both parties may want the same thing, it rarely plays out that way.

The Right Partner Does Not Exist

There is no soul-mate, just as there is no perfect person to hire for a job, or a perfect parent. The danger here is projection and what happens when the halo effect takes over. Men are very visual, and humans in general have a tendency to over-estimate the good qualities in a person who looks good. So, when a man is in lust, he mistakes it for love, enters a long term relationship that should have ended with the first orgasm. For many men, their “soul-mate” is the person right then and there he wants most to stick his dick into.

The End State Depends on Desire

Society from the day you are born, starts programming you. If you are born into the western world, the path of “do well in school, get a good job, find a wife and have children” is communicated to you both covertly and overtly for most of your life. The Blue Pill framework offers you ever answer conveniently wrapped up with a little bow, and sets you “free”.

The Red Pill framework on the other hand gives you few answers, in many ways it only prompts your mind to generate more questions. Whether you find the philosophy because you simply want to get laid more often and with more beautiful women, or because you are barely staying on your feet after a divorce massacre, eventually, you will have to generate your own answers.

It Is About What You Can do For Self

The Red pill takes the perspective that each man owes it to himself to strive for his own happiness and aspire to be the best version of himself. Be this as a father, a worker, a community member, the Red Pill makes no judgement as long as it is congruent with the man’s desire.

Summary and Conclusions

The Blue Pill and Red Pill is a binary choice. The Blue Pill framework is in many ways characterized by it’s idealism, both in evaluation of self and evaluation of others. In many ways the blue pill can be likened to a classical fairy-tale, wherein the prince finally gets his princess after proving his worth and they live happily ever after. Perhaps this is why we are raised on this particular narrative structure.

Perhaps the best illustration of the Blue Pill mindset is “Just be yourself“, the Universe will grant you your dreams, your soul-mate, and all the riches of which you dream.

The Red pill on the other hand, while often viewed as seeing reality for what it is, it is in fact viewing reality sans blue pill idealism. The narrative structure of the red pill is best likened to the adventures of Conan The Barbarian, wherein every time the hero finds happiness and peacefulness, it is taken from him as he lets his guard down.

The purple pill is somewhat of an amalgamate of The Blue Pill and the Red Pill, seeking to avoid the inevitable fate of Macbeth, by embodying just enough of the Barbarian. These men view the red and blue pills as yin and yang, idealism sans idealism. It is a perpetual state, in a sense they are Cypher, aware of the truth but with a deep desire to return to the the dream.

A note:

I recently launched a Patreon page where I will be posting additional content every month for those who support me and I will do a Google Hangout for the highest tier Patrons (limited to 10 people).

I’ve also had some requests for consults, which I’ve declined up until now, but due to demand I’ve chosen to open up for doing some consults on request. For details please check out my Consulting and Patreon Page

22 comments on “The Blue and Red Pill Theoretical Framework”

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